SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database. This ranking includes downloads from two 30- and 35-page papers by 12 tax professors on the new tax legislation that garnered a lot of media attention (including the New York Times and Washington Post) and generated a massive amount of downloads (the papers are the most downloaded papers over the past 12 months across all of SSRN and the most downloaded tax papers of all-time by over 200%). See Brian Leiter (Chicago), 11 Tax Profs Blow Up The SSRN Download Rankings. (For some reason, Mitchell Kane (NYU) — the twelfth academic co-author of the two papers — is not included in the SSRN download rankings (although the downloads are included on his individual author page)). Here is the new list (through July 1, 2018) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

All-Time

Recent

1

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)

168,172

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)

97,797

2

Dan Shaviro (NYU)

106,514

Daniel Hemel (Chicago)

94,022

3

David Gamage (Indiana)

101,928

David Gamage (Indiana)

89,780

4

Lily Batchelder (NYU)

100,987

Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)

89,152

5

Daniel Hemel (Chicago)

97,845

Dan Shaviro (NYU)

88,898

6

Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)

95,894

Manoj Viswanathan (Hastings)

88,702

7

Cliff Fleming (BYU)

92,935

Lily Batchelder (NYU)

87,653

8

David Kamin (NYU)

89,279

Cliff Fleming (BYU)

87,424

9

Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn)

89,044

Ari Glogower (Ohio State)

86,895

10

Manoj Viswanathan (Hastings)

88,797

David Kamin (NYU)

86,891

11

Ari Glogower (Ohio State)

87,238

Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn)

86,790

12

Michael Simkovic (USC)

40,328

Gladriel Shobe (BYU)

23,066

13

D. Dharmapala (Chicago)

34,673

Michael Simkovic (USC)

3,605

14

Paul Caron (Pepperdine)

34,532

Richard Ainsworth (BU)

3,594

15

Louis Kaplow (Harvard)

29,943

D. Dharmapala (Chicago)

3,417

16

Richard Ainsworth (BU)

24,937

Jacob Goldin (Stanford)

2,794

17

Ed Kleinbard (USC)

24,870

Omri Marian (UC-Irvine)

2,629

18

Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)

24,707

Kirk Stark (UCLA)

2,435

19

Jim Hines (Michigan)

23,855

Hugh Ault (Boston College)

2,386

20

Gladriel Shobe (BYU)

23,644

Ruth Mason (Virginia)

2,358

21

Richard Kaplan (Illinois)

22,968

Sam Donaldson (Georgia St.)

2,349

22

Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)

22,824

Kyle Rozema (Chicago)

2,325

23

Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)

21,304

Joe Bankman (Stanford)

2,290

24

Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)

20,558

Stephen Shay (Harvard)

2,151

25

David Weisbach (Chicago)

20,341

Dennis Ventry (UC-Davis)

2,036

Note that this ranking includes full-time tax professors with at least one tax paper on SSRN, and all papers (including non-tax papers) by these tax professors are included in the SSRN data.